Of course. Let's continue with the next chapter.
Here is the translation for Chapter 96.
Chapter 96
Approximately one week before the incident.
Having started Problem Solver 68 but still unable to afford a proper office, Rikuhachima Aru was whiling away her time in a tent pitched in a remote, ruined section of the Gehenna district when she received a call. With no funds for an office phone, the number she had used to advertise their services was, of course, her own personal one.
She had received a total of eight calls so far. Six were for trivial errands that barely qualified as jobs, and one was a prank call. The last had been from a creep who had made an unspeakable demand the moment he confirmed she was a girl. As such, Aru wasn't holding out much hope for this call, either.
She had no idea what this one phone call would bring.
"Yes, this is Rikuhachima of Problem Solver 68."
[Kikikik! I heard a Gehenna student started a problem-solver agency. Is the rumor true?]
"...It is. So, what can I do for you?"
She was, for now, listed as a student at Gehenna Academy, so it wasn't a lie. Though she had been boycotting school with Haruka after rescuing her from some Gehenna bullies, feeling disillusioned with the academy. In any case, Aru's conscience was clear.
[Well, it's nothing major. I'd like to hire you for a job. You said you'd handle any request, didn't you? You must be quite confident in your skills… Kikik.]
"Fufufu, if it's a job, you've come to the right place, client! Our agency specializes in them. The details of your request are—"
[Yes, yes. I need you to kidnap someone. Kishishi—!!]
"Fufu, that's a simple reque… st… huh…?"
[Indeed, a simple request. Your reaction tells me I can trust you with this! As expected, my judgment is impeccable. Kikikik—!!!]
Aru, who had been nodding along without much thought, finally processed the request and her eyes went wide.
'Wait… kidnapping? Isn't that a little too serious for a first job?! Of course, a true outlaw should be able to kidnap someone with ease! But still, I'm not mentally prepared…!'
[Kishishi!! The target you are to kidnap is the Tea Party Host of Trinity… Misono Mika. You can take as much time as you need to prepare. But the deadline is… eh, what was that? Right, ten days from now! A mere club managed to succeed, so for professionals like Problem Solver, it shouldn't be too difficult!]
Aru could hear the person on the other end talking to someone else, but she was more focused on the difficulty of the request itself. This was clearly beyond the capabilities of Problem Solver 68.
'…And the target is the very pinnacle of Trinity Academy, the Tea Party Host?! She's a huge deal! How did that other club manage to kidnap someone like that? Who are they? Ugh, there's no way we can handle this job with our current strength…'
As Aru was torn by internal conflict, the client made a sweet proposal in a cold voice.
[The pay is ten million yen upfront. Upon success, I will pay five times that amount as a bonus. Will you accept?]
It was, of course, a poisoned chalice that the client was offering.
"Of course, leave it to us! However, we don't accept upfront pay—"
[Excellent! I'll send it over right now!]
Aru, who had accepted the poisoned chalice, downed it in one gulp before she realized what she had done. It was the tragic end of a small-timer blinded by a large sum of money.
She gave them her account number in a daze, and a text message arrived, sealing the deal on her mistake.
[Deposit] Problem Solver 68 - ¥10,000,000
Sender: The Great Ma
"Wait, I said I don't need the money upfro—"
[Kikikik—!!! I look forward to hearing good news soon!]
"…"
Beep.
Aru stared blankly at the disconnected call for a moment, then threw open the tent flap, stepped outside, and shouted.
"Chief Clerk Mutsuki! Section Chief Kayoko! Employee Haruka! We have our first job!"
Trapped with no way out, Aru had tearfully summoned the members of Problem Solver.
Chief Clerk, Asagi Mutsuki.
Section Chief, Onikata Kayoko.
Employee, Igusa Haruka.
Of course, Problem Solver 68 was not a real company. They were just a delinquent club that called themselves one. As such, the members' titles weren't official, but now that they had accepted their first official job, Aru was determined to enforce them with particular rigor. This was largely driven by her desire not to look like a child playing office, but Aru was unaware that overusing the titles was, in fact, having the opposite effect.
"Y-You called, Aru-sama!"
"What's up~? Aru-chan, did you finally get a job? This is gonna be fun!"
"It's President Aru, Chief Clerk Mutsuki!"
"Yep, yep, Aru-chan!"
Haruka, who had been diligently folding laundry, was the first to arrive, followed by Mutsuki, who had been slacking off on a ruined wall, and finally Kayoko, who was a little late because she had been listening to music.
"…President, just to be sure. You did get a proper job, right?"
"I just hope it's not too boring! After all, it's Aru-chan's historic first job~♪"
"I think even cleaning would be fine, as long as I'm with you, Aru-sama…!"
"Ohoho. You can put away such trivial concerns. I have landed us a major deal!"
Aru nonchalantly dismissed the concerns of Kayoko and Mutsuki, who, despite her cheerful demeanor, was watching Aru carefully, worried she might have been scammed. And for good reason. In terms of job class, this was a top-tier request among top-tier requests!
The fact that her own incompetence had played a larger role than her ability in landing this job was a minor detail that Aru chose to ignore. From the moment she accepted the job, Aru had begun the process of self-hypnosis, convincing herself that Problem Solver was amazing enough to land a job of this magnitude.
…For the record, this mind control attempt failed as miserably as one would expect from Aru.
"Our mission for this job is to kidnap a specific target. To become true outlaws, we must be able to handle a task like this with ease!"
At Aru's mention of kidnapping on their very first job, Kayoko and Mutsuki were stunned. Haruka, on the other hand, simply nodded along, looking up at Aru as if such details didn't matter.
"Whoaa~! A kidnapping job? That's more serious than I thought! I knew you'd become a true villain one day, Aru-chan! Kufufu♡"
"…So, President. Who's our target? And what's the deadline?"
"The deadline is ten days from today. As long as we finish the job before then, we're good. Our target is…"
Aru's confident smile, which she had maintained until now, faltered for a moment before she forced it back onto her face.
'That's right, this is our first job! I can't let myself get discouraged just because the difficulty is a little… no, extremely high! That would be a disservice to the three who have trusted and followed me! Get a grip, Rikuhachima Aru!'
At Aru's rapidly fading and then reviving villainous smile, Mutsuki was merely amused, but Kayoko was struck by a dark premonition.
"The Tea Party Host of Trinity."
"…The President has lost her mind."
"Hmm…? Aru-chan, come on! You shouldn't joke about the job details~!"
"…?"
A headache instantly set in, and Kayoko pressed a hand to her head. Even Mutsuki, who could brush off most things with an "it's all good," was in denial. Only Haruka, who didn't know what the Tea Party was, looked at them strangely.
"Maybe we should just cancel the jo—"
"Impossible. They sent the down payment upfront. A full 10 million yen."
The jaw-dropping amount left everyone speechless. And that was just the down payment…
"And the bonus upon success is five times that amount. If we cancel a job from a client who can put up that kind of money, word will get out and potential clients will turn away!"
It was a job that was clearly out of Problem Solver 68's league, but the down payment the client had recklessly sent had become a shackle, binding their feet.
The one saving grace for Problem Solver was that they weren't malicious enough to resort to using the target's acquaintances.
Having officially begun their mission, Problem Solver 68 infiltrated Trinity.
Mutsuki and Haruka handled reconnaissance, scouting the area on foot, while Aru and Kayoko took on the role of observing and recording the Tea Party Host, Mika's, movements from the top of a tall building with a scope and binoculars.
And the results:
"Surprisingly, her movements are very public, but she has virtually no escort. Another characteristic is that her companions change frequently."
"The best time would probably be late in the evening~♪ Ah, I almost got caught once when I was watching from a distance! Her senses might be sharper than we think."
"I've marked down the alleys she passes through often… We could plant a bomb and ambush… S-Sorry! I'm sorry for offering such a useless opinion…!"
Surprisingly, their preparations for the job proceeded smoothly. A major factor in this was that Mika had ordered any personnel assigned to guard her to be reassigned to Seia or Nagisa instead. If not for that, Problem Solver's plan would have been discovered by Mika long ago.
"…That's right, that other club managed to kidnap the Tea Party Host! If we, Problem Solver, take this on, it's a guaranteed win!"
Aru said, stroking Haruka's hair with a wicked, villainous smile.
As they were planning, Aru, who had been tailing Mika as she visited the D.U. amusement park with three companions, thought that this might be a heaven-sent opportunity. In the heart of Trinity, even if they succeeded in kidnapping Mika, just escaping the district would be a major undertaking. But if they carried out the operation in the D.U. district, that burden would be lessened. Both Trinity and D.U. had excellent security, so considering the post-operation phase, it was more advantageous to complete the job here and return to the Gehenna district.
And so began the vote on whether to carry out the operation in the amusement park.
Aru, naturally, as the proposer, voted yes.
Kayoko grumbled about having to abandon the groundwork they had already laid, but ultimately voted yes.
Mutsuki, saying it looked fun, voted yes.
Haruka, because Aru-sama said so, of course voted yes.
The results… a unanimous decision to execute the plan inside the amusement park.
"Ahaha, alright! Then shall we proceed… professionally!"
With a flourish of her coat, worn purely for style, Aru raised a hand and shouted, and the members of Problem Solver gave a half-hearted cheer.
"Wait, what are you all doing here?! Are you delinquents—"
"Ah, no! We're sorry!!!"
…It seems the place where they had been holding their strategy meeting was a restricted area.
After Nagisa and I shared one menu item, and Azusa and Hifumi each inhaled one like a vacuum cleaner, we resumed our wandering through the amusement park, conquering rides at a breakneck pace.
We had drifted over to the kids' section, so we started with a ride that guaranteed timeless fun: the bumper cars. The only difference from what I knew was that here, you rode in bumper cars that looked like miniature tanks… bumper tanks. And they were incomparably faster. They were easily three times faster than the bumper cars I knew, so there were actually more students our age than children.
In this area, Hifumi was king. With her overwhelming driving skills and maniacal 'Ahaha!', Hifumi rammed into everyone, and then, the moment she got off the ride, she reverted back to her usual innocent self. It was another moment that lent credence to the theory that Ajitani Faust, leader of the Swimsuit Masked Gang and traitor to humanity, and Hifumi, the high school girl who just wants to be normal, were two different personalities.
Given the generally high difficulty of the rides in Kivotos, there was one I had been secretly looking forward to: the log flume.
Nagisa and Hifumi sat side by side in the front, with Azusa and me behind them. Shortly after, the log boat began to move along the fast-flowing track. After enjoying a relatively peaceful time on the water, the channel section ended and the rail section began. In other words, the steep drop was just ahead.
"Hey, Azusa-chan! If you raise your hands when we go down, it'll be twice as fun☆"
"Raise my hands…? Okay, got it."
I passed on the secret of the log flume to Azusa, who was looking around at everything with an expression of wonder, and waited for the descent to begin… but how long does this thing go up for?
The core of a log flume is the keyword 'getting wet,' so my seat in the second row wasn't bad. I'd get moderately wet and a moderate thrill. The front seat, with its partition, gets the least wet, so I had given it to Nagisa, who was wearing clothes that might become see-through, and even bought her a poncho…
"KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH—!!!"
Log flumes, by their nature, are surprisingly thrilling on the steep drops, but this one was exceptional in both its height and angle.
As a result, I spent the entire 40-meter drop accompanied by Nagisa's screams. And at the bottom, I was met with a splash of water so large it soaked half my body.
This proved that it didn't matter who sat next to whom. No one could escape Nagisa's screams.
Still, I was grateful to have seen the priceless sight of Azusa, who had followed my advice and raised her arms, getting completely soaked and then, upon coming to her senses, bursting into a small, delighted laugh.
There are so many joys in this world that I can still show the Squad girls. From now on, I'll have to work hard to make all of them smile like that.